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An amateur graphic designer here. I was told to redesign a reddit app icon on playstore and he told me to apply the Google's new design scheme that was leaked a few days ago (The first illustration shows the mockup that I made based on the leaked overhaul icons from Google) So currently the second image shows the reddit icon that I was working on with it. It is like a paper with a 'vertical' looking page on the left and the developer told me to make it colorful and apply all the Google's trademark colors. Unfortunately, I'm still not satisfied on how it is looking right now as if it is not like the one on Google's new design scheme so right now, I would kindly like to have some suggestions and feedback on how can I improve the reddit icon by placing the right shadows or right color combinations, others will be of course appreciated and welcome. Thanks alot!

EDIT: no.3 the final icon that I made according to @Bakabaka suggestions :) enter image description here enter image description here

enter image description here

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  • Who told you and who is 'he'? Is this student work? If so, couple quick comments a) this is pretty great b) your best critiques are going to come from your classmates.
    – DA01
    Commented Apr 29, 2014 at 0:19
  • The developer of the app asked me to do a redesign of his app's icon.
    – brettbrdls
    Commented Apr 29, 2014 at 9:56

2 Answers 2

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Decide where your light source is, and stick to that. As you look closer at all icons in the example, they have their light source at 315°—top left. All shadows and shading obey that light source.

In your icon, the dark left page suggests the light coming from 270°—left, yet the shading on the green and red pages suggest a light source at 45°—top right. The apparent shadow of the logo's red dot complicates matters even further.

Moreover, I would shy away from using all Google colors in a single icon unless you absolutely need to. Check any Google icon, and count how many of red, blue, green and yellow actually appear. In your example icons, the 'maps' icon has two (red and yellow), the Gmail and the chat icon have one (red and green respectively) and the others don't even have any. Less is more.

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  • thanks alot for the response. Yeah you're actually right about the colors on the icon.In the first place,I don't really think all Google's color would fit on this single icon because if I compare it to the other Google icons, they have only two or three uniform colors which fits the icon's appearance but no matter how I wanted to refuse it, the developer wants to include it :(
    – brettbrdls
    Commented Apr 28, 2014 at 10:16
  • and the shadow, I'll remove that hard shadow within the red dot antenna and would likely to change it's color to the matching hex code of the blue there, it seems that it bothers users who looks into it. About the page's shadow, do I need to include the 45° top right shadow on green and red? or I just remove it? :)
    – brettbrdls
    Commented Apr 28, 2014 at 10:16
  • As for the colours: stand for your design. Does your developer want an icon, or a Christmas tree? For the shadow: don't drop it, but have it behave according to the 315° light source. Removing it would look even odder.
    – Vincent
    Commented Apr 28, 2014 at 10:19
  • And if you like the answer, an upvote is welcome. Voting is essential on SE sites: they make good content float to the top and have the chaff sink to the bottom... that's not quite a decent metaphor, but I gues you know what I'm getting at.
    – Vincent
    Commented Apr 28, 2014 at 10:21
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    And sorry, I still have a little reputation so I cannot upvote your replys :(
    – brettbrdls
    Commented Apr 28, 2014 at 10:27
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I think you could keep the shadow on the red dot. I like it, gives it dimension. But it seems like the other fonts have shadows coming from 45 left. Stick to that and you'll be good imo.

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